Tripwire Interactive announces the release of the Fall 2012 free content pack for Red Orchestra 2, their World War II shooter sequel. This trailer shows off the new pack, which centers around a new map and a redesign of the countdown game mode. Here's the deal:

The new map is Barashka, a re-imagining and re-working of an old favorite from the original Red Orchestra. This brings in combined arms combat, villages, bridges and a river crossing to fight for. The map features both Territory and Countdown game modes.

For the Countdown game mode, simplified and improved match flow and user interface will make it much simpler to understand, making for much more instant and direct battles. Just to encourage everyone to try out the changes, we'll be issuing Double XP towards your Honor from today in Countdown mode!

Of course, there are a host of other updates to the game. These include requests from the community, such as walk while actively firing machine guns from the hip; increased stamina pool in Classic; chat system refinements and more.

This game was indeed a big letdown especially after how amazing the original Red Orchestra was. The shooting and movement mechanics in this are super solid but pretty much everything else is bad. We don't have the vehicles they promised long ago, Barashka is kind of a nightmare without them, the whole XP/unlock system is stupid as hell in this kind of game, and a lot of the maps aren't very fun. It's not an awful game especially with most of the performance issues fixed, but they really lost sight of what made Red Orchestra great.

I really enjoyed some of the tank battles in the first Red Orchestra, so when I heard that RO2 was going to have only a single tank per side at launch I was a bit disappointed. More were promised to come "soon after", as they were just so much more complex in the second game compared to the first, but seriously? Over a year now, and we've yet to see ANY new vehicles added. Even the halftracks, which were supposedly a priority.

They fixed most of the bugs but the community isn't entirely dead ; a couple of servers manage to be full everyday. I'm still having a blast whenever I play, but it certainly isn't quite what was promised or what it should have been.

I enjoy it & I've found plenty of servers packed, so much so I've had to filter full ones at times. I have to hand it to these guys they have fantastic support & free content is always welcome. They should be releasing the DLC "The Pacific Campaign" soon. Great game if you like realism & not that candy ass COD stuff.

I have to admit this game was a big let down for me last year, the general release was extremely buggy and whatnot. Is it any good these days? Last time I took a peek on steam the MP community was dead.